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Ten Reasons Why I Did Not Vote for John McCain:

1. The mistransformation of John McCain. Somewhere between August 1st and August 31st, John McCain stopped being John McCain. Instead, he became a figurehead of his party who just did what he was told instead of doing what he believed. Whether this is true or not, it was what I perceived and it was an image that I could never shake.

2. Selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate instead of ten other candidates who were far more qualified. Look, I get that they were going for the gamble and the woman looked good on paper, but honestly, what was he thinking? The woman openly admitted in a Spring 2008 interview that she didn't even know what the Vice President did (The easiest answer is the most correct one: Not much if you know the Constitution). That should have disqualified her right then and there.

3. Joe the Plumber. Seriously, why'd you go there, John? There are thousands of other Americans that could have been chosen as a highlight, so why choose a flake like him? Why, John, why?

4. "Bomb, bomb Iran". To be honest, this is supposed to be a reason to vote against him if I had been a stereotypical bleeding heart liberal, but I thought the dark joke was darkly funny. I guess I'm not such a bleeding heart liberal after all. I'm just plain vanilla liberal. Still, the episode highlighted McCain's foray into the borderline inappropriate.

5. Maverick. Can we ban the word from being used by any politician from now until the next century? Let's retire it alongside the phrases of "Yes, we can" and "You betcha!" Catchphrases seem more like camouflage. Sometimes it works, but in this case, it just became a joke. Politicians are never mavericks. True "mavericks" don't last more than two terms as a Representative, much less a Senator.

6. For lack of a better action word, his campaign sucked. I truly believe that John McCain is a better man than he was presented by his campaign, but unfortunately, his campaign just flat out sucked. When the pressure was on, they cracked and cracking under pressure does not engender confidence in an electorate. I don't know anyone who was impressed with the "suspending the campaign" maneuver. It just looked bad and it was only one of many bad looking maneuvers.

7. Rick Davis as his campaign manager. I don't care that Davis is a lobbyist. I do care that he is a lobbyist that they tried to label as not really a lobbyist. An apple is an apple. Admit it and trust my intelligence to decide whether it matters or not.

8. "That one." John McCain was making a very good point in that final debate in that Obama himself voted for measures that Bush and Cheney supported which was contradictory, but then he went and said, "That one," with such animated disgust that he pissed away the good value of his point.

9. His voting record with respect to women is bad. There is no way around it. His voting record with respect to equal pay, equal rights, equal access for women is dismal. Being a woman, this issue was hard to dismiss away.

10. The Supreme Court. I nearly put Barack Obama as my final reason but that was too easy and frankly, too trite. Besides, the Supreme Court is kept looming in my mind. I respect that John McCain is a conservative, but I also know that for good governing and balanced interpretation of the law, balance is key. With the possible retirement of 3 justices, we need appointments that are center-left to balance those who are center-right.

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